Kinks in the plumbing cause geysers to erupt in predictable ways

Many of the world’s geysers erupt so regularly that you could almost set your watch by it. Recently a team of volcanologists from the University of California, Berkeley set out to discover what causes these regular eruptions in an attempt to understand volcanos as well as geysers.

The primary cause of an eruption, according to Michael Manga, a UC Berkeley professor of earth and planetary science, is a loop or bend in the “plumbing” of a geyser that traps steam and bubbles it out slowly to further heat the water in the column.

Eventually the steam bubbles trigger boiling at the top of the column, this releases pressure on the water below and steam and water are forced out of the geyser causing an eruption.

“Most geysers appear to have a bubble trap accumulating the steam injected from below, and the release of the steam from the trap gets the geyser ready to erupt. You can see the water column warming up and warming up until enough water reaches the boiling point that, once the top layer begins to boil, the boiling becomes self-perpetuating,” said Manga in a statement.

The first scientist to take temperature and pressure measurements inside a geyser was German chemist Robert Bunsen. After studying the Great Geyser in Iceland Bunsen proposed, in 1846, that eruptions start when water boils at the surface, allowing boiling to penetrate downward and release pressure.

While Bunsen’s theory essentially holds, modern technology has allowed researchers to understand the process more completely. For example, researchers can now insert cameras into the geysers and explore the plumbing and processes beneath the surface.

Over the past few years, Magna has studied geysers in Yellowstone and Chile as well as a synthesized geyser that he and his students constructed in a lab. The glass geyser allowed the researchers to carefully observe and even manipulate the geyser.

“At many geysers it looks like there is some cavity that is stuck off on the side where steam is accumulating. So we said, ‘Let’s put in a cavity and watch how the bubble trap generates eruptions.’ It allows us to get both small eruptions and big eruptions in the lab,” said Magna.

The work of Magna and his colleagues, including first author Carolina Munoz-Saez, a UC Berkeley graduate student from Chile, is presented in the February issue of the the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research.

Fewer than 1,000 geysers exist around the world, more than half of them in Yellowstone. In order for a geyser to form, special conditions are required. Geysers are located in fields above hot magma. Water trickles down from the surface, to an average depth of 6,600 feet where it makes contact with volcanically heated rocks and slowly heats up until the water boils forcing an eruption.

Magna’s interest in geysers is partially due to an interest in volcanos. His hope is that by better understanding the activity inside geysers it could provide insight into volcanic activity.

“One of our goals is to figure out why geysers exist – why don’t you just get a hot spring – and what is it that controls how a geyser erupts, including weather and earthquakes,” said Magna.

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